KURT LANGMANN PHOTO Aldergrove Secondary teachers Stephanie Martyniuk and Brooke Leary are leading an art project to capture images of the parts of the Aldergrove community that contributors feel they “love best about Aldergrove.”

School art project seeks Aldergrove’s beauty

Two teachers from Aldergrove Community Secondary School (ACSS) have undertaken an ambitious mural project that will seek dozens of contributed photos of people’s favourite scenes of the Aldergrove area.

Stephanie Martyniuk and Brooke Leary plan to take all of these images and combine them in such a way that from a distance the smaller images would combine to create larger images of the community in four side-by-side panels.

The four panels would be installed on the front outer wall of the school, which at present is a blank canvas for the art project.

Martyniuk, who teaches the photography program at ACSS, says she will be asking her students next semester to take photos on digital cameras as well as iPhones and iPads.

Leary, an ACSS history teacher, adds that parents and other members of the community will also be invited to contribute their favorite images of the community.

“The concept is our beautiful community, what people love best about Aldergrove,” says Leary. “It also celebrates the school’s 60th anniversary and each panel will be dedicated to the four decades of the school in the community.”

“We want photos that say a story about connections to this place, that speak to the culture of the school,” says Martyniuk. “At the same time we want to make it as open-ended as possible, not just photos of the school.”

Th project was kick-started by a $3,000 grant from the school’s Parents Advisory Council, and another $7,000 grant has been requested from the provincial Art Start program.

This funding will pay for the reproduction of the images on a durable weather-resistant vinyl or plexiglas that would be installed on the four panels of the school’s front facade.

Martyniuk will be processing and assembling the images using the Photoshop program, with assistance from a local artist who has expressed interest in participating over next summer.

“The smaller images will be in the school’s colours, blue and white, and the larger images will be superimposed to create the effect that can be seen from a distance,” says Martyniuk.

“We hope to hear about the grant from Art Start by May and then work on it over summer so it can be installed in time for the 2019 school year,” says Leary.

KURT LANGMANN PHOTO Four blank panels on the front of Aldergrove Secondary (above the parked vehicles in the photo) will be filled with a mural of contributed photos of Aldergrove.